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As if $24.3 million in cuts for the Marion County School District weren’t enough, now Superintendent Ken Yancey is faced with hacking out an additional $27- to $33 million from next year’s budget. Part of the reason for another massive deficit apparently is that Marion is one of the few counties in Florida to avoid laying teachers off – and there are folks in Tallahassee who think it should be otherwise.

A few weeks ago I reported that Americans had placed their “hope and faith” in one man, our president, to get us out of the various severe crises our country currently is in. Since then I’ve been asked several times if I actually believed in what I wrote.

The continuing abortion conflict received nationwide press attention only three days after the new administration took office in Washington.

On the 36th anniversary of Rowe v. Wade, anti-abortion forces rallied thousands to the nation’s capitol to restate their opposition. A smaller group of pro-abortionists held their rally a few blocks away at the Supreme Court building. In a spirit of impartiality, the justices didn’t wave hello to either group.

Has the compact been broken? Has our government failed us? The numbers and feedback leads us to believe that our ability to reverse the economic slide is complicated geometrically with each passing day. Our failure to act resolutely to end massive unemployment and housing foreclosures may lead us into a form of chaos that we have not seen in 200 years, if at all.

Good government isn’t a case of playing follow the leader. At times, it seemed like we belonged to the Pied Piper school of self-preservation: two clashing ideas but often in play over the last eight years. The Democrats made good speeches but the record shows that they were abysmal at raising the standard. Good, solid speeches but no cohunes.

It’s the first of the New Year and a good time for families to check on their financial positions, to see if 2008 was as bad to them as they feared. It would be great to know if you could now plan for that dream vacation to Hawaii or perhaps a cruise to far away countries you’ve always wanted to visit.

As was feared by gun lovers during the recent elections, the liberal Democratic candidates and the so-called anti-gun groups were all outspoken regarding what actions they intended to take if the now president-elect was successful in getting elected. The actions mentioned were a ban on semi-autos, center-fire rifles, .50-cal. guns, small handguns, gun rationing (one a month), national registration, national licensing and repeal of the ban on predatory lawsuits designed to put gun manufacturers and gun stores out of business.

Is it a surprise to anyone in the Corridor that state officials say the county’s land use plan is up to its rooftops in disarray? The community isn’t crowded – yet. If it weren’t for the economic slowdown, for which we saw the roadside signs in 2007, the number in rooftops would be increasingly more uncomfortable by now.

Don’t give the auto

industry a blank check

Some people have said that if you bailout the auto industry you are only rewarding the greedy workers who made cars that Americans did not want. Other people have said that if you bailout the auto industry you are rewarding those in management who only cared about their large salaries and bonuses from these over-sized and over-priced cars and trucks.

Columnists love political years. We’re into our third in a row, with no let up in comedy. Vice President Joe Biden’s wife said recently that he could have been Secretary of State if he had wanted the job. We’d have loved to see Mrs. Clinton boil over when she heard Jill and Joe drop that bomb during an appearance on Oprah.

We now have a new president and possibly a new direction for our country, so let’s look at how we ended up in this crisis of failed banks, mortgage companies, all kinds of loans, etc. Our new president has been talking down the economy, he is full of doom and gloom, warning that things are dire and bound to get worse.

With the worsening economy, those who dream of an additional park in the Corridor have all but given up hope of anything materializing. But an empty pocketbook for buying land is nothing new for the folks at the Marion County Parks and Recreation Department, and they’ve learned to search for the few state and federal dollars that are available nowadays.

We had heard from the hinterlands there was an apparent sense of dread spreading round the country like some great unknowable plague aiming to take us down, individually and collectively. Is it the Henny-Penny-sky-is- falling syndrome? But in this particular case, it had relevancy in fact.

A small news item about a homeowner who balked at a notice to remove a boat from a driveway prompted a recent Star-Banner editorial chastising the city code enforcement personnel for bad public relations.

The editorial suggested that simple code enforcement matters aren’t all that simple, and even used the word “harassment” a couple of times. We think that’s bunkum.

Before I became a citizen of these United States and could register to vote, I would proudly declare myself a Democrat. After all were not they the party of the “New Deal,” the party of the underdog, the party of the weak, the party of the working people everywhere?

How then did this party, my party, become identified with abortion on demand, identified with turning their backs on the weakest of the weak?

In the first 10 days of September 2008, one of the worst crises in American history broke into public view. We saw several of the oldest and largest financial institutions in the world wiped out.

The government stepped in and rescued the largest insurance company in the world (AIG) and two quasi-public corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that invest in about half the mortgages in the U.S., were bailed out with $200 billion. The stock market lost more than 40 percent of its value but, thanks to vigorous steps to combat it, the loss has been abated.